Posted by Elizabeth on August 26, 2008 at 14:59:38 user Elizabeth.
In Reply to: Arthur Ransome isn't loved? posted by Adam Quinan on August 26, 2008 at 10:58:57:
I think it all hinges on the word "most", in the title "Most Loved". AR wrote at a higher reading level than Enid Blyton, but the books filled the same need in children--adventure & freedom from adults. Even the less-able readers could enjoy Blyton's series, but only the stronger readers would have picked up AR's books and continued through the very long descriptive passages. Which means that the people gathering the survey information are going to find larger numbers of people who read Blyton as children than who read AR. The way they count the "most" loved will have been by sheer numbers of people who mentioned (or checked off) a given author's name, so numbers win the game.